Sending Her to Sleep
by Queen of the Castle
Summary: As their lips finally part and Amy's eyes drift shut, Amy could swear she hears the words 'bad wolf' whispered on the air like a lullaby. Amy/Rose, Amy/TARDIS


Amy sighs and flips around onto her other side, trying to find a more comfortable position yet again.

After so many years living practically all alone in a big house, she finds it difficult to sleep with the beating and humming noises of the TARDIS constantly echoing around her. Even the knowledge that the Doctor's off somewhere tinkering with something or trying to find where the TARDIS has moved the swimming pool since yesterday or whatever doesn't make her feel any more secure in that too-loud place. There's an odd sort of _presence _that lingers all around the TARDIS, even right there in her room with her.

That doesn't mean that Amy expects to see an actual person staring down at her in the darkness when she opens her eyes once again in frustration, though.

"Whoa!" Amy yelps, and nearly falls clean off the bed in surprise. "No, wait, hang on, what?"

There's a girl at the foot of her bed, just standing there with her hands tucked into the pockets of her hoody as if there's nothing wrong. As if she's been standing there all along, even.

The girl looks completely disinterested in Amy's flailing attempts to break free of the sheets that have tangled around her. Thankfully, she also doesn't seem particularly like she wants to murder Amy in her not-quite-sleep, either.

The door never even opened, Amy realises suddenly. The hinges of her bedroom door always creak something fierce, and Amy would definitely have heard that. So how the heck did the girl get in here?

Amy swallows and finds her voice. "So, what, are you some kind of ghost or something? Is that what this is? Some spirit flitting around the ship through closed doors or whatever? 'Cause I don't like the other options. I'd prefer not to be seeing things that aren't there, not to mention talking to them as well. I'd rather not be crazy, if it's all the same to you."

She sits up and violently thrusts her hand out, expecting to see it go right through the girl as if she's not really present at all, the way it always does in ghost movies. Instead, her fingertips poke solidly into the girl's stomach.

"I think this is probably where I'm s'posed to say 'ow'. Or so I've gathered," the girl says.

Amy blinks and then continues staring at the girl. "There's a stranger in my room," she says, her voice pitching up a notch. "There's a complete stranger, right here, in my room, staring at me. In my room that's part of a ship parked out in the middle of nowhere in the time vortex. How does that happen? How did you even get on board?"

"I've always been here," the girl answers, sounding for all the universe as if Amy should already know that. Amy recalls her first reaction to seeing her and thinks that maybe she _did _in a way, though how she knew is a different thing altogether.

"All right, so we're getting into creepy horror movie territory now," Amy says, leaning back slightly towards her headboard, as if those inches somehow grant her a greater amount of safety. "Why do these things always happen to me?"

"Because you're special, Amy Pond," the girl says. She sounds oddly like the Doctor in that moment, enough that Amy stops freaking out and peers more closely at her.

There's a weird sort of air of danger around the intruder suggesting she might be much more than she appears, but all in all she looks harmless. Sort of nice, even. Amy thinks she might as well give her the benefit of the doubt. It's not as if she'll really be given all that much choice anyway, if the girl turns out to be some kind of crazy ax-murderer or something.

"So I know I'm going to regret asking," Amy says slowly, "but... well, let's just say you _have_ always been skulking around in here — which really makes me wonder whether the Doctor's got any other girls stashed away in different corners of the ship, by the way — but if we're going to go with that being for real, then why come out and show yourself to me _now_? What do you want?"

"To help," the girl says. "Program 17 has been activated."

"Program what-now?" Amy asks.

"Program 17. My system reports that someone of your species from your origin time and planet needs 7.632 hours of rechargin' for every 24 hour cycle. Without that, you're gonna get yourself into trouble. Program 17 is meant to stop that. That's why I'm here."

"You're here just because I can't sleep?" Amy asks incredulously. "And hang on, what's all that about systems and stuff? Don't tell me you're some kind of evil robot or something. I mean, I expect that sort of thing with the Doctor, but not _inside _the TARDIS."

"I dunno if the word 'robot' is one of the ones that can be used to describe me. It's difficult to tell, yeah? Your language is primitive and limited, and my translation circuits can only work so many miracles, especially since my Time Lord keeps fiddlin' with them."

Amy laughs nervously. "Great, stuck in a room with some girl who doesn't even know how to explain who or what she really is. And anyway, the Doctor's not _your _Time Lord. If he's anyone, he's mine. I'm the one he travels with."

"No, _I'm_ the one he's _always _travelled with. He'd have been stuck without me," the girl claims, which makes Amy frown in confusion.

"What? I'm with the Doctor, so I can put up with someone making very little sense pretty well, but you're making _none_. No offence, but I think I've had enough of it. So yeah. Doctor!" she calls loudly. "Doctor!"

"That's not gonna help. I control how sound travels through my internal sections. My Time Lord can't hear you right now."

"Your internal... hang on, you're _the TARDIS_?"

"That word seems familiar to me, yeah."

"But you can't be the TARDIS," Amy says. "You're just so... _blond_."

"This is just a form. This is the member of your species to whom I most closely relate. I am her, or have been, or will be. I dunno. Like I said, language is way too difficult to get exactly right. I can't get across all my knowledge without losin' most of the important bits along the way. Let's just say that my deep connection to this girl is what lets me appear to you as a solid person instead of just an image. She's left somethin' of herself behind with me without even realisin' it."

"Yeah, yeah," Amy says impatiently, "that's all well and good, but you haven't actually answered the question, have you? Why are you here looming over me in the first place? Are you planning on reading me a bedtime story?"

"I don't believe, based on the probabilities I've calculated, that you would get any benefit from that. Have I got one of your customs wrong?" the girl asks.

"Not so much. Even if it _would _work, I doubt you know any good stories, anyway."

"I'm here to put you to sleep as efficiently as possible." Amy thinks there's actually something a bit threatening about that idea. "It's easier to take the direct route, goin' right to the source. I can easily switch your brain into its sleep cycle."

"What, get all up in my head? Like it's nothing? You can control my mind? And there we are, right back to the horror movie again. Can you tell what I'm thinking now?"

"Of course. You're projectin' pretty loudly that you and my Time Lord will be havin' serious words about him not mentionin' that his ship is a _mind controllin'_ ship. I'm not _his _ship, though. It's the other way 'round. Also, I have more important things to do than control you. My Time Lord is trouble enough to need constant supervision. It's just that right now you aren't actin' at maximum capacity, so you increasin' the risk of harm to yourself when my Time Lord puts you in risky situations, as he always seems to. But as soon as my safety mode stops sensin' danger to one of my occupants, I don't reckon you'll even see me again at all."

"So I'm supposed to just let you make me sleep, and then you go away?" Amy asks curiously. She's still suspicious, of course, but to be honest it's not really any weirder than anything else that's happened to her whenever the Doctor is within 20 miles of her.

"Say I agree," Amy says. "How do you do it? Am I just awake one second and then out cold the next, before I even know what's happened?"

The girl shrugs. "I dunno how your species experiences the process."

So there's no guarantee this isn't going to be unpleasant, Amy realises. She hesitates for a moment, but she's nothing if not always up for a bit of a challenge. "All right," she says bravely. "Show me what you've got, then."

The girl — the TARDIS, Amy corrects herself, though she looks so normal that it's hard to remember that — approaches Amy's bed. A jean-clad knee presses down on the edge of the mattress and the girl ends up kneeling so close in Amy's personal space that for a moment Amy second-guesses herself, thinking this might be a terrible idea after all. It's pretty much too late, though. The girl is already hovering close enough over her that their skin is nearly touching, and Amy is made aware that the girl is giving off no body heat. She's there, but she's not.

And yet it turns out that her lips feel _very_present. The girl presses them to Amy's and Amy's eyes widen at the spark that shoots between them for several seconds before tiredness abruptly swamps her mind and her eyes close.

* * *

><p>The TARDIS, true to her word — or <em>its <em>word, maybe, since Amy's not really sure if the spaceship has a gender behind the pretty blond facade — is gone from Amy's room without a trace when Amy wakes up the next morning (relatively speaking, of course). Amy supposes that, actually, the TARDIS is still right there in a sense, since Amy's inside her (which, she has to admit, is kind of a naughty thought now that she has a human face to put to the ship). She's only really gone in that the apparition of the girl is no longer anywhere to be seen.

Amy still feels an odd sort of loss at her absence, as weird as she knows that is. She knows the girl's really just a machine (or mostly a machine; the Doctor's never really been all that clear on the whole thing where his ship's apparently alive). However, that doesn't change the fact that Amy's not used to going to sleep pressed up against another body only to wake up completely alone.

Amy thinks of Rory suddenly, back at home at his buck's night by now. It's a good thing he's used to her kissing other people, what with her job and all. Amy doesn't think explaining that it's not really cheating if it's not with a _real _person would quite work otherwise. Not like if she'd kissed, say, the Doctor. Although, she thinks slyly as she walks into the console room and sees the man in question, that might be worth it anyway, if she could only convince the Doctor.

"So your ship decided to sneak into my room and rock me to sleep last night," Amy announces. "Or close enough, anyway."

"_My_ ship would never do a thing like that," the Doctor protests. "Well, except if maybe she does, of course. Hard to predict what she'll do next, really, even for me. She tends to get a bit temperamental and do all sorts of mad things sometimes. _Not_," he quickly adds," that I'm not perfectly able to rein her in. I'm a very good pilot — no, _great _pilot, you won't find one better — make no mistake."

Amy lets her disbelieving look speak for her.

"So what's this about the TARDIS suddenly showing a bit of a voyeuristic streak?" the Doctor says, pointedly changing the topic. "I thought that sort of personality change only happened to Time Lords. Not me. Other Time Lords, when there were others, which obviously there aren't anymore. Anyway, peeping-TARDIS. Explain."

"Well, it turns out that your ship likes to dress up like a human sometimes. Is that usually a Time Lord thing as well?"

The Doctor doesn't look amused or even affronted like she expects. Instead, there's something sad about his eyes, the way sometimes happens without any warning with him. "It's been known to happen," he admits. Then he perks back up. "Any particular human?"

"What?"

"The TARDIS. Did she appear as someone in particular, or just a sort of amorphous human-shaped blob thing?"

"Oh. Yeah, it was a girl. Maybe about my age, with bleached hair and a hoody and jeans. A London accent, as well. It never really occurred to me that a spaceship would sound so cockney, somehow."

The Doctor, as good as he is at hiding his emotions, has that sadness in his eyes again as suddenly as it was wiped away. He clearly recognises that description, and is affected by it. Regardless, he fobs her off, simply saying, "Oh, I wouldn't worry about it, then. She does that sometimes. She's harmless."

"You know, the ship said it actually _was_that girl at some stage. That's weird, right? But you're always going on about how smart you are. I bet you know what that means."

"She's only her sometimes," the Doctor says a little too flippantly. "Don't worry about it. It's not a problem. Unless the girl's eyes were glowing gold. That could be very bad, very very incredibly bad, universe-alteringly or even -endingly bad. There weren't doing that, were they? Glowing?"

"Um, no. There were normal. About the only thing about her that was, really."

"Good, then! Splendid! Nothing to worry about. Just let her get it out of her system, that's the best idea. You know how older model TARDISes are. Or, well, maybe you don't. I do, though. Trust me."

"What, you're saying just let her wander around in my bedroom whenever she likes?"

The Doctor smiles slightly. "Don't worry, there's not exactly anything in there that she hasn't already seen. It's technically _her _bedroom, after all, since she's the one who grew it. She's constantly in there, in a way."

Amy remembers thinking something very similar herself not that long ago, but she still hasn't figured out whether to be freaked out or comforted by that concept.

* * *

><p>She's been thinking about it on and off in the back of her mind, sure, but Amy doesn't even realise what she's doing until the girl shows up again. Once she's there, though, Amy has to admit that she's been keeping herself awake on purpose.<p>

It's been about two weeks since the girl showed up unexpectedly, and Amy's found that she wants to see her again. Even with the Doctor — or perhaps especially with the Doctor, in a way, even though she's been waiting for him her whole life — this existence in the TARDIS can get a little lonely. Even if the girl is just an illusion created by the TARDIS itself, she still _feels_ as though she could be a real, if weird, companion. Amy doesn't want to go back to Leadworth and weddings and _married life_, at least not yet, but a little company would still be appreciated.

"So, kissing," Amy says as a greeting when the girl appears. "I'm not complaining — I like a good bit of kissing, definitely — bit it's not exactly at the top of the list of ways I'd expect to be put to sleep. Pretty much the opposite."

"But it was, actually," the girl says. "There needed to be physical contact. I saw in your mind that that was your favourite kind of contact. Was that wrong or somethin'?"

Amy supposes it's not wrong, actually. She can't think of many more pleasant things than a bit of snogging before bed, though she guesses it's just as well her mind wasn't a little further in the gutter when the TARDIS looked into it. She doesn't think she's _quite _ready to have full-on sex with a spaceship. The kissing, though, is surprisingly all right with her. She wouldn't mind a bit more of it, actually.

"Are you ready to be switched to sleep mode again?" the girl asks.

"I don't think so," Amy says. "Not just yet. I'm wondering, do I _have _to fall asleep as soon as you touch me?"

The girl doesn't visibly react at all if she grasps the idea of Amy wanting to 'touch' her at length. "I'm capable of interfacin' with you without you sufferin' any bad effects, if that's what you're askin'."

"Good," Amy says. "We should do that, then. Before you put me to sleep."

The girl looks thoughtful, but still not perturbed. "Program 17 exists to help. Would that help you?"

"Yeah, I think it might."

"I don't really get it," the girl admits, "but my Time Lord seems to enjoy facial contact as well. He and I did that when I was actually wearin' this body. He's very strange for a Time Lord, from what I can tell; more like your species a lot of the time."

"Hang on. He _kissed_ you, or her, or whatever? The Doctor actually kisses girls? Ha!" Amy exclaims. "I _knew _he wasn't above all that, whatever he tries to pretend. Does he kiss a lot of girls?"

The girl appears to think for a moment. "Not that appears in my records, though I don't keep track of my Time Lord when he's away from me."

"So he must have been close to her," Amy says, thinking of the Doctor's sadness. "I bet he misses her."

Amy wonders if the girl ever appears to the Doctor this way to try to alleviate that sadness. The thought makes her feel oddly jealous, though she's not entirely certain whether the feeling is over the girl or the Doctor. She shoves that thought aside by reminding the girl that she was about to kiss her.

"As you wish," the girl says.

Amy hopes that the girl enjoys it too. Yes, she's just a spaceship, but the TARDIS said she _was _the girl, and she's clearly got a physical body; maybe she's a little bit more human than ship when she comes to Amy.

Amy tells herself it means something to the girl as well, even if she doesn't _quite _understand the whole thing.

As their lips finally part and Amy's eyes drift shut, Amy could swear she hears the words 'bad wolf' whispered on the air like a lullaby.

When Amy goes prying around into the Doctor's past and triggers the stream of images of previous TARDIS occupants, she doesn't know why she's surprised to see the face from her dreams flash by several times during the loop. Even though he's in a mood after she ribs him about his harem of pretty travelling companions, she still can't help but ask about her.

"That one in the purple hat," Amy says. "What's her name?"

If Amy hadn't already figured out that the girl is special to him, even more so than the other people he's travelled with, the fact that he knows exactly which girl she's talking about, out of all the images that appear, would clinch it for her.

He doesn't speak for a long while, but eventually he says, "Her name was Rose. Rose Tyler."

"Rose Tyler," Amy repeats slowly, trying the name out. It suits her, though Amy has a strange feeling that a number of other names might as well.

She doesn't press him with further questions — she can tell she's pushed him further than he's comfortable with already, and she doesn't feel like getting into a _serious _argument with him just now.

Still, now she has a name to put to the face. Rose Tyler feels more like a real person to her than ever.

* * *

><p>Even after Rory comes on board the TARDIS, Amy doesn't stop occasionally wearing herself out on purpose so that the girl (Rose) appears. She's not alone anymore, but she can't deny that she's attached to Rose.<p>

Amy knows he'd forgive her, but she figures it's easier if Rory doesn't know about it in the first place. Rory sleeps like the dead, anyway. The slight shifting of weight across the mattress isn't anywhere near enough to wake him. So there's no reason to make a big deal out of it, Amy thinks to herself.

She tries to pretend it's not mostly because she wants to keep that time with Rose to herself. As much as she loves her two boys, sometimes she just needs to have another girl around.

It's not just the way that strange weight of her — not quite what it should be given her height, just like the body heat is absent, as if the TARDIS has lost something in translation — presses Amy into the bed as they kiss, her lips surprisingly supple and giving and making Amy wonder how she got so good at it. Amy just plain likes _her _(or the combination of the TARDIS and her personality, or whatever exactly the girl she thinks she's half fallen for is). She knows exactly why the Doctor misses this girl so much.

Although she somehow doubts he ever spent as much time kissing her as Amy has. His loss.

* * *

><p>When the TARDIS finds a whole new image to project, Amy finds that she's incredibly disappointed. She doesn't know how to get the ship to change herself back, though. It's as if, by spending several hours inhabiting that wild woman from the asteroid, she's forgotten that Rose Tyler was once the person to whom she was most closely tied. Besides, the ship doesn't really understand human concepts and emotions. It wouldn't get why Amy's become attached to a projection even though she's known all along that it isn't real.<p>

The woman — sadly much older and less blond and less strangely charming than Rose, just a few out of many obvious differences between them — closes in to kiss Amy, as is their custom. Amy flinches away slightly, unable to help the instinctive reaction to the difference.

She asks the woman to send her to sleep with a less personal kind of touch. The ship — for Amy's reminded for the first time in ages that this really _is _just a ship, and not a real woman — doesn't think anything of it. It doesn't understand.

Amy knows the girl (now woman) is no different now than she ever was, give or take a few changes in appearance and in mannerisms. It was never the real Rose Tyler who came to Amy at night.

She doesn't ever keep herself awake on purpose again, choosing instead to curl her body around Rory's and try to go to sleep quickly enough that she doesn't have time to really miss that girl.

It hardly ever works.

~FIN~


End file.
